How Stressful is Your Home

The 20th century gave everyone access to unprecedented and previously unimaginable luxury and convenience. Homes were built with all the modern conveniences that even 50 years ago would have been unthinkable. The time-consuming tasks of food preparation and washing by hand had almost completely disappeared from the daily household routine. The introduction of convenience foods, vacuum cleaners, washers/dryers, spray cleaners and non-iron materials meant that, in theory, everyone had more free time than ever before for what is important to each of us. Yet, now, at the beginning of the 21st century, most people complain about the lack of time to do things.

Life has changed very quickly in the last few decades and our expectations of what we want to achieve have dramatically changed. Information technology via mobile phones, e-mail and the Internet has given all of us the opportunity of immediate communication with anybody, at any time, anywhere on the planet. So it seems odd that with all this high-tech advancement we should still feel stressed and have restricted free time. More and more people are finding that they are cash-rich but time-poor, which means they are unable to enjoy life to the full.

The question is, do our busy lifestyles create problems for us because we have too much to do, or is it because we do not have enough energy to cope? If we explore further and look at why energy levels have become a problem, one reason is that stresses in our environment are in fact depleting our emotional and physical resources. As we juggle, several projects at any one time we are aware of how we are using our energy. However, when the source of stress is within our environment it is invisible and unfamiliar so we do not realize just how much energy we are wasting in dealing with it.

Stress In The Home

In the past, few people considered their homes to be a source of stress. After all, the home is a place of safety – a sanctuary and retreat. As homes became more cozy and comfortable in the 1980s, particularly with advanced in-home entertainment, people spent more time there. Today, at the start of the 21st century, homes continue to be important because many people want to retreat from the greater pressures in their working environments.

Now, more than ever, our homes need to be healthy centers of calm to support and regenerate us, so the idea that they may cause us stress is a revelation. Also our homes are believed to be mirror images of us, so if our home is suffering, then so are we, physically, mentally and emotionally.

The fact that our homes can cause stress is not a totally new idea in the West. After the Second World War, Germany embarked on a huge program of new housing. This boom was followed by the discovery that people who lived in these homes started to suffer from disease and ill health, and a connection was very swiftly made with the construction methods and materials that were being used. It led to the formation of Bau Biologie movement which fosters a view that a home is an extension of the human body and that there are various ways of building homes that reconcile modern construction methods with nature. If we are indeed connected to the homes we live in, then it is quite possible that any changes in their construction and their contents may have an adverse effect on our health.

New Construction Methods

Over the last 60 years in post-war Britain, there have been very big chances in house building, with the biggest shift taking place in the 1970s. In the early part of this decade, most homes were fitted with central heating which massively increased comfort levels and reflected the new prosperity in Britain.

Then later in the decade, the cost of fuel rose sharply making heat conservation a very important issue. A huge amount of resources were then diverted into making modern homes well insulated and as a result they simply stopped breathing. Bau Biologists recognize that this method of construction is a major threat to our good health. Now, we are discovering that there are health implications with the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed and possibly, very attached. Many people are living in homes that have increasing levels of man-made radiations from computers, TVs, stereos and other electrical equipment.

It is my view that depression has a direct correlation with the stress caused by these electromagnetic fields. Prozac is such a spectacularly successful drug, now reported to have been taken by 35 million globally and I would make a connection between the use of this drug and the dominating presence of technology in our lives. In the light of this, depression has the potential to become a new world epidemic. It is currently the major cause of the loss of a productive life in 15 to 44 years old and together with other mental problems represents 25 percent of all illness in Europe. In May 1999, 330 million people worldwide were estimated to be suffering from depression and each year in America 19 million adults develop a depressive illness.

The modern lifestyle of luxury, excess and technological reliance that we have created and adapted to is beginning to be more widely linked to health issues. My experience has shown that we are suffering from toxins that are contained in cleaning materials, furnishings and fabrics. Even the very food we eat and the water we drink have been identified as being laden with high levels of pesticides and chemicals because these were thought to be the best way to provide us with pest-free fruit and vegetables and clean water.

Over this period of material prosperity, it is true that in many ways the health of Western nations has deteriorated and I would link that to the way we live. Many people’s lives are imbalanced by stress and this will often result in both physical and mental suffering. In Britain, for example, the leading cause of death is cardiovascular disease, and this condition includes heart attacks, stroke and heart failure, and government statistics show that this accounts for 275,000 victims a year. This is followed by cancer, which claimed the lives of 157,000 in 1996 and, according to figures issued by the Cancer Research Campaign (CRC), accounts for 27 percent of all deaths in Europe (25 percent in the UK). The CRC claim that 70 percent of cancers have some connection with an unhealthy lifestyle, with 250,000 new cases diagnosed in the UK every year. Health experts now believe that stress is one of the main triggers of these conditions, currently the biggest killers in the Western world. So if we can find ways of managing our stress more effectively then we stand a better chance of avoiding ill health.

In addition to protecting ourselves from these diseases, it is also becoming clear that there are a growing number of conditions from which people suffer every day that erode wellbeing and diminish quality of life. Allergic ailments and conditions such as asthma and diabetes also seem to be on the increase. Asthma, strongly associated with environmental toxins and air quality, now has 3.4 million sufferers in the UK, with three times as many adults affected as twenty years ago. One in seven children (aged 2 to 15) now suffer symptoms. It is estimated that there are 10 to 20 times more allergy sufferers in the UK than in the 1960s with 50 percent of Americans suffering some kind of allergy. Fertility levels in many industrialized countries have dropped and this is believed to be linked to chemicals in water, pesticides on food as well as exposure to computer radiation. For men in the UK, this has dropped by an incredible 50 percent in the last 60 years.

The incidence of diabetes, a condition that is associated with the over-consumption of the sugary and processed foods that have become more and more popular over the last 40 years, is expected to treble to 3 million in the UK over the next decade while there are 123 million sufferers worldwide. The British Diabetic Association says that in addition to the 1.4 million sufferers in 2000 there are a further one million people suffering the condition who are as yet undiagnosed. And bearing in mind the increasingly sedentary lifestyles that we have, it is disturbing to hear of research from Harvard (published in 1999) in a study of 40,000 men over ten years. They determined that those people who watched an average of 40 hours a week of TV were twice as likely to develop diabetes as those who watched less than two.

Many people are getting used to living more restricted lives, managing their pain and discomfort because they believe their symptoms are simply the signs of getting older. But good health is not just an absence of diseases, it is about having vitality and feeling joyful. This can become a real possibility if we rethink our diet and include more organic food and make changes to our environment that are recommended throughout this book. Look at your home with new eyes and consider what changes you can make to bring your health and life back into balance.

— From The Healthy Home by Gina Lazenby.

Available at National Book Store.